Doomsday Clock Set at 3 Minutes to Midnight

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That's the grim outlook from board members of The Bulletin of the
Atomic Scientists. Frustrated with a lack of international action
to address climate change
and shrink nuclear arsenals, they decided today (Jan. 22) to push
the minute hand of their iconic "Doomsday Clock" to 11:57 p.m.

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists doesn't use the clock to
make any real
doomsday predictions. Rather, the clock is a visual metaphor
to warn the public about how close the world is to a potentially
civilization-ending catastrophe. Each year, the magazine's board
analyzes threats to humanity's survival to decide where the
Doomsday Clock's hands should be set.

Experts on the board said they felt a sense of urgency this year
because of the world's ongoing addiction to fossil fuels,
procrastination with enacting laws to cut greenhouse gas
emissions and slow efforts to get rid of nuclear
weapons.

"We are not saying it is too late to take action but the window
for action is closing rapidly," Kennette Benedict, executive
director of The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, said in a news
conference this morning in Washington, D.C. "We move the clock
hand today to inspire action."

For instance, if nothing is done to reduce the amount of
heat-trapping gasses, such as carbon dioxide, in the atmosphere,
Earth could be 5 to 15 degrees Fahrenheit (3 to 8 degrees
Celsius) warmer by the end of century, said Sivan Kartha, a
senior scientist at the Stockholm Environment Institute.

Some people might not feel alarmed when they see those numbers;
they might normally experience that kind of temperature swing in
the course of a single day, Kartha said. But, he said a
temperature increase of that magnitude was enough to bring the
world out of the last
ice age, and it will be enough to "radically transform" the
Earth's surface in the future.

Sharon Squassoni, another board member and director of the
Proliferation Prevention Program at the Center for Strategic and
International Studies, said nuclear disarmament efforts have
"ground to a halt" and many nations are expanding, not scaling
back, their nuclear capabilities. Russia is upgrading its nuclear
program, India plans to expand its nuclear submarine fleet, and
Pakistan has reportedly started operating a third plutonium
reactor, Squassoni said.

She said the United States has good rhetoric on nuclear
nonproliferation, but at the same time is in the midst of a $335
billion overhaul of its nuclear program. (That figure seems to
come from a
Congressional Budget Office report from December 2013.)

"The risk from nuclear weapons is not that someone is going to
press the button, but the existence of these weapons costs a lot
of time, effort and money to keep them secure," Squassoni said,
adding that there have been troubling safety discrepancies
reported in recent years at power plants.

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists was founded in 1945 by
scientists who created the atomic bomb as part of the
Manhattan Project and wanted to raise awareness about the
dangers of nuclear technology. The Doomsday Clock first appeared
on a cover of the magazine in 1947, with its hands set at 11:53
p.m.

The clock's hands shifted quite a bit over the following seven
decades. They were closest to midnight in 1953, set at 11:58
p.m., after both the United States and the Soviet Union conducted
their first tests of the hydrogen bomb. The clock's hands were
pushed all the way back to 11:43 p.m., 17 minutes to midnight, in
December 1991, after the world's superpowers signed the Strategic
Arms Reduction Treaty, which at the time, seemed like a promising
move toward nuclear disarmament.